Spanish vs English or English vs Spanish

Question

Who has the tougher time learning the non-native language. Spanish to English or English to Spanish.

Don't forget to put question marks (?) where they belong. - 00e5a88f, Jul 26, 2012

Answer 1

I'm not sure. English ponunciation is a lot more difficult than Spanish. It has more sounds and it's difficult to know how to say a word only by reading it. Also English has a wider vocabulary. And, in my opinion, phrasal verbs are really, really, difficult to get.

But Spanish has the subjunctive, the conjugation of verbs, the masculine and femenine words. Because, why table is femenine (la mesa) and book is a masculine (el libro)? The order of the words in the sentences is very flexible and it could be confusing.

So, in Phonetics and Vocabulary, the English is the most difficult.

But in Grammar and Morphology, I personally think, it's the Spanish.

Welcome to the forum .... good thinking ...here is your first vote !!::)). - shish75, Jul 26, 2012

and heres your second vote, I agree with you . - heliotropeman, Jul 27, 2012

Thank you very much! I've just found this site and I love it. I think it's a great tool to learn both ways and I 'm happy to help anyone to learn Spanish. - irnalonso, Jul 27, 2012

Answer 2

I agree that English is a tough one. I teach English and have a hard time explaining differences in pronunciation (seems like there are no set rules) and differences in word meanings.

The pronunciation alone will put anyone off to learning to speak!

Spanish is at least logical with some set rules. How great is it that all vowels are pronounced the same always!

I love Spanglish !!::)). - shish75, Jul 26, 2012

Answer 3

In the 80’s English became the monetary language of the world. A person couldn’t get a job as an air traffic controller in Russia unless they spoke English. Young people from all over the world rushed to Universities to learn English. They had been told all their lifes that English was one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. Yet, students were speaking it in less than 3 years. The discovery was that English is a straight up and down verb language. A person only has to learn the subject pronouns (he, she, you, it , we, they) and attach an unconjugated root verb.

I talk him tomorrow. He talk me today. She talk her yesterday. ( You can’t do this with any other language in the world)

It’s true…1/3 of English words are not pronounced as they are written. But….

Both languages use approximately 975,000 words. Both languages use about 45,000 words which make up the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. We are very repetitive. Plus 5,000 verbs

English = 45,000 repetitive words + 5,000 straight up and down subject pronoun verbs. English has 7 verb tenses…but, it’s not necessary to learn anything other than the root to get by. So, English = 45,000 + 5,000 = 50,000 to get by.

Spanish = 45,000 repetitive words + 5,000 verbs with 13 tenses. There are over 100 spellings per verb…thus, 500,000 verbs. You have to learn the conjugations of all. So, Spanish = 45,000 + 500,000 = 545,000 to get by.

People can argue about phrasal verbs, pronunciation of words, etc….or they can look at the math. Go figure ???

both languages have about 975,000 words in the dictionary, We use only 45,000 of them.:) - viejito, Jul 27, 2012

In spite of partially agreeing with you, maths don't explain a lot about learning a language. If they did, learning languages would be a lot easier! - irnalonso, Jul 27, 2012

Answer 4

Spanish to English... English is one of the hardest languages to learn.